Korean films about despair

Promising fund manager Jae-hoon is at the brink of losing everything when his company goes bankrupt. Overwhelmed by despair, he takes an impulsive trip to Australia where his wife and son live. As his trip nears its unexpected end, Jae-hoon gets a chance to look back on his life.

A kidnapper disappeared 15 years ago without a trace. Five days before the case's statute of limitations expires, someone anonymously leaves a flower at the crime scene. A few days later, another kidnapping takes place using the same method on a similar target.

May, 1980. Man-seob is a taxi driver in Seoul who lives from hand to mouth, raising his young daughter alone. One day, he hears that there is a foreigner who will pay big money for a drive down to Gwangju city. Not knowing that he’s a German journalist with a hidden agenda, Man-seob takes the job.

To combat rising violent crimes, the Police Chief asks Detective Oh Goo Tak to form a team consisting of criminals. He is currently suspended from the police force for using excessive force. He then gathers team members: Park Woong Chul who is a gangster, Lee Jung Moon who is the youngest serial killer with extraordinary intelligence and Jung Tae Soo who is a contract killer. Police Inspector Yoo Mi Young also joins the team and she tries to have these guys work as a team by dealing with them rationally and sometimes emotionally.

Assassination is set in Korea and Shanghai in the 1930's during the Japanese occupation. The government resistance assigns a secret commando group with killing collaborators.

The film is based on a true yet unsolved murder case from the early 1990s that is known among Koreans as the "disappearance of the frog children." In 1991, five elementary school students told their parents that they were going to hang out on a nearby mountain to catch frogs, and then they go missing.

A transgender cop's retirement plans are interrupted by a gang seeking revenge for their arrest.

When a young mother reconsiders abandoning her baby, she discovers a scheme selling foundlings for adoption.

The film mainly follows the famous 1597 Battle of Myeongryang during the Japanese invasion of Korea (1592-1598), where the iconic Joseon admiral Yi Sun-sin managed to destroy a total of 133 Japanese warships with only 13 ships remaining in his command. The battle, which took place in the Myeongryang Strait off the southwest coast of the Korean Peninsula, is considered one of the greatest victories of Yi.

Seo-jin is a widower still grieving his wife’s death. Then he receives the news that her long-lost younger sister, Yoo-jin, who went missing 25 years ago, has turned up. Unlike the rest of his family, who welcome her into their arms, Seo-jin feels that Yoo-jin is a stranger.

After a terror incident occurs mid-flight, a passenger jet declares an emergency.

As a grisly virus rampages a city, a lone man stays locked inside his apartment, digitally cut off from seeking help and desperate to find a way out.

When an illicit arms deal goes bad, North Korean spy Pyo Jong-seong finds himself targeted not just by the South Koreans but also his own bosses.

Gon, a Korean hitman bred in the United States where he works for a Chinese triad, usually flawless in taking out his targets, makes a terrible mistake in fulfilling a mission. Swamped by feelings of regret, Gon no longer wants to be a hitman, but, in order to tie up loose ends, his boss forces him to do another job in Korea.

Stagnant since 1903, at an elevation of 9000', a volcano erupts on the mythical and majestic Baekdu Mountain.

Pastor Park is head of a religious investigation center that exposes cults and cult leaders. While looking into a suspicious new religion called ‘Deer Mount,’ he slowly uncovers clues that connect this cult to a series of mysterious cases of missing teenage girls when a body is found inside a damaged tunnel beams. He begins to uncover dark secrets surrounding this cult and its enforcer Na-han.

After waking up with mysterious wounds on his hands, a champion fighter finds himself in an otherworldly battle against evil forces that wreak havoc in the human world.

Jae-Hyeok lives with his mother, his sister-in-law and nephew Min-Jae in a small Korean town. He is dating Yeon-Joo, while working at the local nuclear power plant. Meanwhile, Pyung-Sub works at the same nuclear power plant. He is worried about conditions there, but nobody in the government listens to him. An earthquake strikes the small town where Jae-Hyeok lives and causes explosions at the nuclear power plant. The situation quickly spirals out of control, leading the entire nation to panic. To prevent another nuclear disaster, Jae-Hyeok and his co-workers return to the nuclear power plant.

A three-tiered story centered on a trio of French tourists visiting the same seaside resort.

An internet broadcaster recruits a handful of people for their 'experience the horror' show at Gonjiam Psychiatric Hospital, a place selected as one of the '7 freakiest places on the planet'. They are to explore the haunted asylum and stream it live on their online show.

Ma Seok-do works as a detective squad chief. His team struggles to bust a criminal ring who originally came from Yanbian, China and led by Jang Chen.

A man becomes a fugitive from the police after he kills one of the men who raped and murdered his daughter.

An undercover cop has his loyalties tested when the boss of the corporate gang he's spent years infiltrating dies.

Whatever she does, Eunhee feels like an outsider. Then her new Chinese teacher turns out to be so utterly different from everybody else. A compassionate and meticulously told narrative of a seemingly regular summer that leaves nothing unchanged.

Busan, South Korea, 1970s. Lee Doo-sam is a small-time smuggler. After helping a drug gang to smuggle meth, he falls into the dark crime world. Quick-witted and full of ambition, he eventually takes over the drug underworld and starts to lead a double life: a good community leader during the day but an infamous drug lord during the night.

Martial law is declared when a mysterious viral outbreak pushes Korea into a state of emergency. Those on an express train to Busan, a city that has successfully fended off the viral outbreak, must fight for their own survival…

Doo-Sik (Jo Jung-suk) gets paroled from prison thanks to his younger brother (Do Kyung-Soo) Doo-Young. Doo-Young is a promising judo athlete. After 15 years, Doo-Sik (Jo Jung-suk) suddenly appears in front of Doo-Young and they begin to live together. Doo-Young becomes involved in an accident before the selection for the national team.

In response to a sudden dismissal of staff, workers at a big retail store begin a protest against their employer's oppressive labor policies.

A comedy romance movie about the last generation of youths and their passionate romance based in Hongseong, Chungcheong Namdo in the 1980s.

In the early 1980s, South Korea is torn by student protests over the lack of representation in the government. Song Woo-Seok is a successful attorney in Busan specializing in tax law. His views regarding civil liberties are changed by student activist Park Jin-woo. When Jin-Woo is brutally tortured and put on trial for his activism, Woo-seok decides to defend Jin-woo as his client.

A young girl is kidnapped by a serial killer. The serial killer uses manholes to kidnap and kill his victims. The young girl's older sister tries to save her before it's too late.

Joo Joong-won is the arrogant, greedy CEO of Kingdom, a conglomerate that includes a supermall and a hotel. "Ghost whisperer” Tae Gong-shil, is a misunderstood outcast who can't keep a boyfriend or a job since a near death experience left her seeing needy ghosts. She feels compelled to help them resolve their earthly issues so they can move on to the afterlife... and he feels compelled to think she's crazy. Soon their lives merge into a complicated web of hijinx, misunderstandings, and... yes, love.

On the run from a dogged internal affairs agent, a corrupt cop reluctantly teams up with a defiant teen to unravel a conspiracy -- before it's too late.

A poor North Korean fisherman finds himself an accidental defector, and is groomed to be a spy by an ambitious South Korean military officer.

On the way to his mother’s funeral, a detective accidentally hits a person with his car. He takes the body with him and puts it into his mother’s coffin. The moment he feels relieved, he receives a call. This caller insists that he saw the detective’s hit-and-run, but instead of asking for money, he wants to know about the body’s whereabouts, leading to a do-or-die showdown of the witness and detective.

Stuntman Cha Dal-geon gets involved in a tragic airplane crash and ends up discovering a national corruption scandal in the process. Go Hae-ri, the oldest daughter of a deceased marine, decides to work for the National Intelligence Service as a secret ops agent in order to support her mom and younger siblings, although all she wanted to do is to become a civil servant.

When an old collaborator gets severely injured, a veteran policeman tries to figure out the way to bring to justice the ultimately suspected aggressor, a spoiled young executive, heir to a mega corporation, who believes he is above the law.

Along With the Gods: The Last 49 Days follows the journey of 3 Afterlife Guardians and Su-hong as they journey through their 49th trial in order to gain their reincarnations and how the Guardians slowly recover their forgotten memories through Household God in the living world.

On September 4, 1984, democracy movement leader Kim Jong Tae (Park Won Sang) is arrested and taken to an infamous interrogation facility in Namyeong-dong. For the next 22 days, he would be cruelly and continuously tortured in all manners by interrogators intent on forcing him to confess to communist collaboration.

After his career takes a turn for the worse, superstar actor Kang Seo Joon is afraid he’s hit rock bottom. But after a chance meeting brings the talented chef Han Ji Woo into his life, Seo Joon is certain his luck is about to change.

Seong-cheol is a high school student who grew up neglected. In order to make money in a harsh society that abandoned him, he teamed up with Gi-joon, who is two years younger than him, to use his status as a minor to make money and seek a big blow. A father who left home, a sick brother and a mother whose cares for him. Seong-cheol, who was abandoned in hellish reality, starts a desperate survival in his own way.

A mother lives quietly with her son. One day, a girl is brutally killed, and the boy is charged with the murder. Now, it's his mother's mission to prove him innocent.

When Hye-Jung was young, her life was difficult. She was good at fighting, but also studied well. Overcoming her tough situation, she is now a doctor.

A squad of soldiers fight in the Korean War's crucial Battle of Incheon.

Eliminate the North Korean hidden VIPs! Won-cheol of the National Intelligence Service of the Republic of Korea is offered a mission. Eliminating VIPs who participated in the operation to develop weapons of mass destruction in North Korea. Won-cheol is forced to accept the mission while thinking of her daughter 'Ah-reum' who is in danger… The secret operation of South and North Korean special agents begin!

Grandmother Mi Ja works part-time as a caretaker, and struggles to raise a teen grandson by herself. Despite her tough situation, she speaks softly, dresses fashionably, and approaches the world with child-like curiosity. Enrolling in a poetry class, she endeavors to capture life in verse form, but her simple dream of completing a poem is stalled by the early signs of Alzheimer's disease and the heavy financial and emotional burden of her grandson's shocking wrongdoing.

Seven years after the roundup in Vietnam, Ma Seok-do joins a new squad to investigate a murder case. He soon starts to dig deeper when he finds out the case involves a synthetic drug and a gang of thugs.

A comic artist and an unemployed sex columnist are trying to work together in order to win a lucrative comic-book competition. An adult cartoon contest is announced offering a W130 million prize. Da-Rim (Choi Gang-Hee) does translation work for an adult magazine. Da-Rim wants to become a writer. Due to her creativity, Da-Rim is always making mistakes and gets fired by company. Talented cartoonist Jung-Bae (Lee Sun-Kyun) is constantly turned down by publishing companies because of his poor story lines. The two, who seemed perfectly matched, team up for the adult cartoon contest. Trouble is set to brew ...

Shuji is an uncompromising young filmmaker at odds with Japanese society. One day he learns that his loan shark brother, who had helped to finance his films, has been executed by his own yakuza gang for failing to repay his debts. Described as a love poem to Japanese films of the past, as well as a protest at the present, CUT is an exploration of one man’s obsessive relationship with cinema.

A shady cop finds himself in over his head when he gets caught between Internal Affairs and the city’s corrupt mayor, in this scintillating crime drama from Korean maestro Kim Sung-soo (The Warrior).